Companies Owned by Berkshire Hathaway

What does it actually mean to say a company is owned by Berkshire Hathaway?

Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company. It does not run a single business under one roof; instead it owns the equity of many separate operating companies, each of which keeps its own name, management, and legal identity. When people say a brand is “owned by Berkshire,” the precise meaning is that Berkshire holds the controlling equity of that brand's legal entity, usually 100 percent of it, and that entity sits beneath the Berkshire Hathaway parent in a corporate family tree.

This is a crucial distinction, because Berkshire is famous for two very different kinds of position. The first is outright ownership of subsidiaries it controls — GEICO, BNSF Railway, Duracell, and so on. The second is large but minority stockpositions in public companies it does not control, such as Apple and Coca-Cola. A lot of confusion about “what Berkshire owns” comes from collapsing those two categories into one. This page keeps them apart, because the structural lesson for a founder lives entirely in the first category.

The reason that lesson matters here is that the legal machinery Berkshire uses to own a subsidiary is the same machinery a one-person business uses to own itself: a formal entity that separates ownership and liability. For a small founder, that entity is most often a Delaware LLC, and the logic that justifies it at Berkshire's scale justifies it at yours too.

It also helps to be precise about what “owned” does not mean. It does not mean Berkshire runs the day-to-day of each brand from a central headquarters; the company is famous for the opposite, leaving subsidiary managers largely autonomous. It does not mean the brand loses its own name or legal personality. And it does not mean every business Berkshire touches is a subsidiary — a licensing arrangement, a supplier relationship, or a stock purchase are all different things. Ownership, in the strict sense used here, means holding the controlling equity of the legal entity that is the business. Keep that definition in mind and most of the popular confusion about Berkshire dissolves.

Which household brands does Berkshire Hathaway own outright?

Berkshire owns more than sixty significant operating subsidiaries, and many are brands you encounter constantly. In insurance, the headline is GEICO, the auto insurer Berkshire took to full ownership in 1996. In transportation and energy, it owns BNSF Railway, one of North America's largest freight railroads, and Berkshire Hathaway Energy, a sprawling utilities business. It also owns Precision Castparts, an industrial manufacturer of aerospace components.

On the consumer side the names are even more familiar. Duracellbatteries became a Berkshire subsidiary in early 2016, acquired from Procter & Gamble. Dairy Queen, See's Candies, and Fruit of the Loom are all wholly owned, as is Brooks, the running-shoe brand, which Berkshire holds through Fruit of the Loom after that subsidiary acquired it in 2006. Add Benjamin Moore paints, Pampered Chef, NetJets, Acme Brick, and Nebraska Furniture Mart, and the breadth becomes clear. More recently, Berkshire took Pilot (the travel-center chain) to full ownership, completing the final stake around early 2024.

Every one of these is a real, verifiable subsidiary that Berkshire controls, not a licensing deal or a partnership. And every one is held as its own legal entity rather than absorbed into a single corporate blob — which is exactly the pattern a founder copies, in miniature, with a single formation. If you want to see how that formation works end to end, our how it works page walks through it.

It is worth noticing how varied these businesses are — insurance, railroads, batteries, ice cream, candy, underwear, paint, private jets, bricks, furniture, and fuel stops. That diversity is the whole point of a holding company: unrelated businesses can sit under one parent precisely because each is its own entity, with its own books and its own liabilities, rather than one tangled operation. If a product-safety claim landed against one subsidiary, it would generally stay contained within that subsidiary rather than reaching across to the others or to the parent. That containment is not an accident; it is the designed benefit of owning each business through a separate legal person.

The dates and amounts attached to these acquisitions can shift in the retelling, so treat specific figures as approximate unless you check the primary filing. What is not approximate is the ownership status itself: each brand named above is, to the best of public record, a controlled Berkshire subsidiary rather than a stock holding. That reliability of status — owned or not owned — is the part that carries the structural lesson, and it is the part worth getting right when you think about your own entity.

Which brands are confused as owned by Berkshire but are NOT?

This is where most lists go wrong. Berkshire holds enormous stock positions in companies it does not own in the controlling sense. Apple is its single largest stock holding by value, but Berkshire does not own, operate, or control Apple — it is a shareholder, not a parent. Coca-Cola is a decades-old stake, again a minority stock position, not a subsidiary. The same is true of American Express, Bank of America, and Chevron: large investments, independent companies.

Kraft Heinzis a trickier case worth flagging. Berkshire holds a substantial stake — reported in recent years at roughly a quarter of the company — but a large minority position is still not the outright ownership it has over GEICO or Dairy Queen. Treating Kraft Heinz as a “Berkshire-owned” brand in the same breath as See's Candies would be inaccurate. If a source lists Apple, Coca-Cola, or Amex among the companies Berkshire “owns,” read that as a stock holding, not a subsidiary.

The reason this matters beyond trivia: ownership and a stake carry different legal and tax consequences. A controlled subsidiary is consolidated into the parent; a stock position is just an asset on the balance sheet. The same difference, scaled down, decides whether your own venture is a separate legal person or simply you with a brand name — which is the entire reason founders form an entity in the first place.

How does Berkshire structure ownership, and why does Delaware come up?

Large US conglomerates rarely own a business as a loose arrangement. They own it through a formal corporate entity — a corporation or an LLC — that holds the assets, signs the contracts, and carries the liabilities of that business. Stacking many such entities under one parent is the holding-company structure, and it is how Berkshire keeps GEICO's risks separate from BNSF's, and both separate from the parent.

Delaware is the default home for an enormous share of those entities. The state's Court of Chancery, its well-developed body of corporate case law, and the predictability of its corporate and LLC statutes make it the standard choice for US subsidiaries and parents alike. A multinational holding a US operating business will very often route it through a Delaware entity for exactly these reasons. That is the same legal substrate a solo founder taps into with a Delaware LLC formation.

So when you read that a Berkshire subsidiary is “a Delaware company,” it is not exotic — it is the ordinary plumbing of US business. The franchise-tax and compliance regimes differ between LLCs and corporations, which we get into below, but the underlying appeal is shared: a recognized, litigation-tested jurisdiction for holding a business as a distinct legal person.

There is one fork in the road that the Berkshire comparison can blur. The large subsidiaries people picture — and the parent Berkshire Hathaway itself — are generally corporations, with shareholders and boards, while a solo founder usually wants an LLC, which is simpler and taxed as a pass-through by default. Both are Delaware entities and both deliver the same liability separation, but they are not the same tool. A founder planning to raise venture capital later might eventually need a Delaware C-Corp, because investors typically expect one; a founder running a lean business almost always wants the LLC. The shared idea is the entity wall; the right specific entity depends on where you are headed.

How does a single founder use the same Delaware vehicle?

You do not need a conglomerate to benefit from the holding-company logic. The core idea — a legal entity that owns the business and is separate from its owner — works just as well with one founder and one company. A Delaware LLC is that entity. It owns your revenue, your contracts, and your business assets, and it stands between those and your personal property. That is the same wall Berkshire keeps between its subsidiaries and its parent, simply at the scale of one.

For a founder, the practical steps are short. You form the LLC in Delaware, obtain an EIN from the IRS, open a US business bank account, and run the business through the entity rather than through yourself personally. If you sell online, you might add a Stripe accountin the LLC's name. None of this requires you to be in the US. The mechanics are the same ones large groups use; only the number of entities differs.

The benefit, in plain terms, is separation. If a claim arises against the business, it is generally directed at the LLC and its assets rather than your personal savings, provided you keep the company genuinely separate — distinct bank account, clean records, signing as the company. This is general information, not legal advice, so confirm your specific protection with a qualified attorney. But the principle is exactly what makes the holding-company model attractive at every size.

There is also a credibility dimension that mirrors the big-company version. When a Berkshire subsidiary signs a contract, the counterparty is dealing with a recognized legal entity, not an individual. A founder gets the smaller-scale equivalent of that the moment the LLC exists: suppliers, banks, and payment processors are dealing with a registered Delaware company rather than a person trading under a nickname. That recognition is part of why so many founders form the entity before they have meaningful revenue — the structure signals that the business is a real, separable thing, which smooths the banking and contracting steps that come next.

One thing the Berkshire comparison should not imply, however, is that you need a stack of entities to start. Berkshire holds dozens of subsidiaries because it owns dozens of distinct businesses; a founder with one business needs exactly one entity. Adding more entities is a question for much later — if you ever spin out a brand, take on partners with different stakes, or separate a risky line from a safe one. For the great majority of founders, a single Delaware LLC is the whole structure, and layering on complexity before there is a reason to is a common, avoidable mistake.

Owned outright versus held as stock: how do they compare?

The cleanest way to see the difference Berkshire makes between owning and holding is side by side. The table below contrasts the two categories and maps each onto the founder-scale equivalent, so the structural parallel is obvious.

For your own venture, the left column is the one that matters. Forming a Delaware LLC puts you in the “owned outright” position over your business: you control it, you own the entity, and that entity gives you the separation a stock holding never could. For a deeper read on the entity itself, see our Delaware LLC overview.

There is a tax dimension to the same split that is easy to overlook. When a parent owns a subsidiary outright, the two are typically consolidated for financial and tax purposes; when an investor merely holds stock, the relationship shows up as an investment that produces dividends and capital gains, not as a combined enterprise. The contrast is the corporate version of a question every founder eventually faces: is this thing legally part of me, or separate from me? An entity makes it separate. That separateness is what lets the business have its own EIN, its own bank account, and its own tax filings, which is the practical groundwork the rest of this guide builds on.

What ongoing Delaware obligations come with the entity?

A Delaware LLC carries a light, predictable compliance load — far lighter than a corporation. The main ongoing state cost is the Delaware franchise tax, which for an LLC is a flat $300 per year, due June 1, starting in the LLC's second year. There is no Delaware annual report for an LLC, so that flat tax is essentially the whole state obligation. Miss the deadline and Delaware adds a $200 penalty plus 1.5% interest per month, and the LLC loses good standing until it catches up.

One point worth clearing up, because it trips people up when they read about big Berkshire corporations: the “authorized shares” and “assumed par value” methods of calculating franchise tax apply only to corporations, never to LLCs. An LLC does not have shares, so it never uses those methods — it pays the flat $300. If you ever read a franchise-tax figure in the thousands tied to share counts, that is a C-Corp calculation, not an LLC one. Our Delaware LLC taxes page covers the broader federal picture.

Beyond the franchise tax, you keep a registered agent in Delaware, which renews annually. That is the routine of holding a Delaware entity: a flat tax, a registered agent, and clean records. It is intentionally simple, which is part of why the state is so widely used by entities large and small.

The contrast with a corporation is instructive, and it is the same contrast Berkshire's own structure embodies. A Delaware corporation files an annual report and calculates its franchise tax from share-based formulas that can reach into the thousands, whereas an LLC has no shares, no annual report, and a single flat figure. For a founder, that simplicity is a feature: the ongoing obligation is small enough to put on a calendar and forget about until June. The point is not that one structure is better in the abstract, but that the LLC is built for exactly the lean, owner-operated situation most founders are in, while the corporation is built for the share-issuing, investor-facing situation the big subsidiaries occupy.

What do non-resident founders need to know to form one?

A large share of the founders who form Delaware LLCs are based outside the United States, and the entity is built to accommodate that. You do not need a US Social Security Number, an ITIN, a US visa, or a US address to form the LLC or to get its EIN. The EIN is obtained with Form SS-4, which the IRS processes by fax or mail for applicants without an SSN — the reason it takes 2 to 4 weeks rather than minutes. Formation itself completes in about 48 hours, and a US business bank account is usually opened within 1 to 5 business days after the EIN arrives. The full path is on our Delaware LLC for non-residents guide.

The federal filing most non-resident single-member owners must not miss is Form 5472. If you are a non-US person owning 25% or more of a single-member Delaware LLC treated as a disregarded entity, the IRS requires Form 5472 each year, attached to a pro-forma Form 1120, reporting transactions between you and your LLC. It is due April 15 and extendable with Form 7004, and the penalty for failing to file is $25,000 under IRC 6038A. Details are in our Form 5472 for Delaware LLCs guide. Banking and payments are covered by Delaware LLC banking; approval is always the bank's or processor's own decision, and is not guaranteed, so we help you apply cleanly and to alternatives if needed.

A note on beneficial-ownership reporting, since it changes often: under a FinCEN interim final rule issued in March 2025, US-formed domestic entities are currently exempt from BOI reporting, while certain foreign reporting companies remain in scope. This area is still evolving, so confirm the current FinCEN status before relying on any summary rather than treating a past deadline as current.

What does the founder version of the Berkshire model look like in practice?

Picture a founder outside the US launching a small consumer brand. The first move mirrors Berkshire's own approach to a new acquisition: put the business inside a formal entity. The founder forms a single Delaware LLC under the brand name, so the entity that owns the trademark and signs with suppliers is the same entity that holds the bank account. Formation completes in about 48 hours, and the EIN application goes to the IRS, arriving in 2 to 4 weeks.

Once the EIN lands, the founder opens a US business account in the LLC's name and, if selling online, applies for Stripeunder the company. Revenue flows into the entity, expenses flow out of it, and the founder's personal finances stay on the other side of the wall. From year two, the founder budgets the flat $300 franchise tax each June 1 and files Form 5472 annually. It is the Berkshire structure in miniature: one parent — the founder — owning one operating entity, cleanly separated, in Delaware. For the full cost breakdown, see our Delaware LLC cost page.

The contrast with running the same business as an individual is what makes the model worth the small effort. Without an entity, the brand, the revenue, and the liabilities all attach to the founder personally; there is no wall, and a dispute over the business can reach personal assets. US banks and payment processors are also far more comfortable onboarding a registered company than an individual selling under a trade name, so the entity tends to unlock the banking and payments steps as well. None of that approval is ever guaranteed — it remains the bank's and the processor's own decision — but the founder operating through a clean Delaware LLC is presenting the structure those reviewers expect to see, which is the same structure that sits beneath every Berkshire subsidiary, just sized for one.

How much does forming the founder's Delaware LLC cost, year one and after?

Our service is a single flat fee of $397, and the Delaware state filing fee is already included — there is no separate state charge to add on. That one payment covers the Certificate of Formation, the EIN application, a registered agent for year one, your operating agreement, and US bank and Stripe application support, all with direct human help. There are no hidden tiers and no surprise renewal in the first year.

From year two, the recurring Delaware cost is the flat $300 franchise tax plus your registered-agent renewal. Because there is no annual report for an LLC, the franchise tax is the entire state-level obligation, and missing the June 1 deadline triggers the $200 penalty plus 1.5% monthly interest noted earlier — which is exactly why we track the date for you. For the complete pricing picture, including how this compares with a corporation, read our Delaware LLC cost breakdown and our Delaware LLC taxes overview.

Many of these companies chose Delaware for the same reasons founders do today — the Court of Chancery, flexible LLC statutes, and strong privacy protections. Form your Delaware LLC for $397, all-inclusive, in 48 hours. Form your Delaware LLC → | Read the complete Delaware LLC guide →